The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 69 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Iovine: AI will never write a song like Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind'
“AI will never be able to write Blown in the Wind by Bob Dylan. Not in anyone who's listening to this, or in my lifetime, for sure.”
Iovine: Brilliant creators combine innate talent with early childhood trauma
“Well, to be really brilliant, I call it, there has to be a bend in the pipe. You know, whether it's through trauma or through your interpretation of yourself, of how that could happen... It's usually trauma from when they were younger... You put that trauma, c…”
Lütke: Staying private sequesters growth gains to accredited investors
“All these accredited investors accredited investor laws and stuff like this all they do is, like, make it so that
Like, when you're rich, you can invest in private company stock.
And when you're not, you can't.
And, well, where are the returns?
Like, of co…”
Mackey: Founders Must Never Give Up Control to VCs
“I always tell young entrepreneurs, don't give up control of your business to the VCs. They may talk a good game, but they're not fundamentally aligned with you.”
Dyson: Experienced hires from existing companies bring habits that resist change
“The older you get, the more you try to apply your experience. And if you've come from an existing company, we may have picked up bad habits. I'm not saying we don't have bad habits at Dyson, but I'm saying you picked up the habits of that company, which may no…”
Dyson claims he learned absolutely nothing from his £500M EV failure
“One of the, everybody said, you know, you must have learned a lot from that experience, and the answer is I learned absolutely nothing.”
Ferrari: Heavy process is a necessary lesser evil for mediocre teams
“I think if you have and maybe there's nothing you can do about it, if you have a mediocre talent, then I think the appeal of process and procedures becomes greater. Checks, rules, cause you need to guide more. You can count on people to problem solve autonomou…”
Reil: Europe lacks breakout companies because founders lack aggression
“And then we sadly have a continent where we don't have breakout companies because people just lack the aggression.”
Reil: Social media commentary is entirely worthless and net negative
“I think commentary is entirely worthless and it has almost, it has no positive contribution. The only thing that it does is It I think it drags some people down so it has a net negative benefit, and it obviously is, is encouraged through you know, the way the …”
Kalanick: Politicians only allow regulatory progress under threat of disruption
“And the only way to get progress In a democracy is for that politician who seeks to be popular when he's under threat. When there is a threat of disruption or instability is the only time you'll get progress in Western democracy.”
Culture is abandoning a decade of aesthetic relativism for objective beauty
“People are allowed to care about objectively beautiful things again. We had probably a decade or the better part of a decade where we had to take this aesthetic relativistic view of everything is beautiful in someone's eyes, and this piece of art that is like …”
DHH: Windows is the epitome of having no design taste
“Apple for the longest time Was the undisputed leader in that, especially when you compared it to Windows, which was the epitome of having no taste, of having no sensibilities about how things should look, and having no cohesive vision for what a computer shoul…”
DHH: Users must pay you to earn the right to give feedback
“If you want to tell me ill-considered feedback on anything I make, you gotta pay me. And you can do that with Basecamp, and you can tell me.”
DHH: Rich entrepreneurs have a moral obligation to buy Italian supercars
“If you sell a product or service and you make a lot of money on it, put that money back into the system, send some of that money to the craftsmen of Italy to create you a beautiful Ferrari, right? Like, there's someone who has to stitch that seat such that it'…”
White: Philippe Dauman Was One of the Biggest Brand Killers Ever
“That guy ended up being one of the biggest brand killers of all time. Oh, Phil Duman MTV fucking, you know, think about all the Viacom Legendary networks they had that this guy had sucked the life out of and killed.”
White: Showtime Boxing Had the Most "Dog Shit Production Ever"
“And I fucking thought that Showtime was the most dog shit production ever. In boxing.”
White: UFC Fight Island Was the Only True Sports Bubble During COVID
“It was the only true bubble that existed in sports at that time. All the other ones were bullshit.”
White: Reporters Covering the UFC Are Zeros Who Have Accomplished Nothing
“These guys who report on what we're doing that have no clue what we're doing. Why would I want to hear any of the, anything they would have to say? They're zeros. They've literally never done anything in their life, especially in this business. Why would I lis…”
Armstrong: Bad socialist policies collapsed Argentina from top 10 to 100th richest economy
“And then over a period of like a hundred years of bad economic policy, of essentially like socialist policies of them, the government, like stealing wealth from the people. Well, claiming to help them. It's now like the 100th richest economy in the world. It w…”
Fried: Business Post-Mortems Are Useless Because Outcomes Cannot Be Truly Explained
“The reason I don't like the postmortems in business, and I know a lot of businesses do this, they do, they launch something, they spend all this time and energy looking back on it, trying to figure out why it did what it did, and my general sense is you'll hav…”